Bran is Forgotten
by Javir
Summary: Bran is forgotten in the Winterfell courtyard first story please review just trying to start out simple please read
1. Chapter 1

Bran

They had forgotten about him he was the three eyed raven the one entity who had the chance of helping the living win against the dead and they had forgotten about him in the winterfell courtyard. Did everyone forget that his legs no longer work and with all the snow around him he could not possibly roll around in his wheelchair by himself. I have never missed Meera more than I do at this moment she would never have forgotten that he was left here but he had been rude to her in an attempt to get away from winterfell so she would be safe when the battle finally happened. A part of him thought about calling for help but instead he found he was too proud to call some random stranger to help him he was Brandon Stark named after the man who built the greatest structure man had ever seen, he had survived the loss of his legs, he had journeyed beyond the wall and fulfilled his destiny and this was his home most of the people here were sworn to his family surely one of them would realize he was stuck and help him but alas nobody had come. Sam finally popped up to talk to him learning the death of his family yeah the guy thought he had problems when he was stuck in this freezing weather help me out you pile of skin Bran thought maybe if I tell him to tell Jon the truth he will roll me away from here. It's time to tell Jon the truth, wait shouldn't you tell him your his brother Jon is downstairs in the crypts how am I supposed to get down there you idiot is what I wanted to say instead I just said he trusts you more then anyone go tell him Sam walked off not caring at all about getting me out of this predicament I was wrong he was not a good man. Finally across the courtyard I saw Jaime when his eyes made contact with mine I felt some small hope finally maybe at least he will remember me instead he freaked out and ran in the other direction I sighed I was never going to leave this spot.


	2. Chapter 2

Your reign is over."

"My reign has just begun."

Crushing the Great Masters as they siege Meereen is one of the most satisfying moments in her tumultuous life. She'd spent so long leashing herself, leashing her dragons, at the behest of small men. To finally shake loose of her chains feels invigorating. There is no doubt, no shame, no fear. Her children send several flagships of the armada crumbling into the sea under a surge of fire and the rest surrender. The only undeserving to suffer are those of the slaves manning the ships she made example of, and for that collateral, she feels pangs of remorse, but a few fallen for the victory of all is something she can live with. They thought to crush her and her freedmen under their boot heels once more and she is made stronger for it.

"They can live in my new world or they can die in their old one."

The way her days ring so eerily familiar threatens to disturb her, but she pushes the sensation aside and focuses on the path that lies ahead.

"It will mean blood on your hands."

"The blood of my enemies. Not the blood of innocents."

The path that lies ahead is a treacherous one. As she finds herself on yet another significant precipice, she reevaluates many assumptions. She takes a good hard look at her surroundings, her advantages, her liabilities, her methods.

Her singular grand plan.

Lannisters were the downfall of her family before she was ever born. They are fated to become her downfall as well. Suddenly, inexplicably, she is very sure of this. In the unexplainable way that she was sure walking into her husband's burning pyre would not mean the death of her, but a new beginning, a birth of greatness. She is sure again. Whatever possessed her to give the little lion man so much sway over her mind?

He will betray you, a dark voice whispers in the hush as she watches Tyrion, as he tries to temper her scorched ground strategies. Makes reprehensible deals with slaveholders in her absence, ignores the greater insights of her two most trusted friends, her two most knowledgeable advisors on the matters, leading her freed city to the edge of ruin then trying to convince her to still restrain herself in its havoc.

Men like him would let men like Grey Worm be cut and sold, let women like Missandei stay in chains, endure their entire lives in suffering and indignity, for the sake of comfort for an evil class, for the sake of easy politics.

No, let him give her that concerned look, that look a sensible man gives an irrational monster. For that is what they are, what they must be. Sensible men, those that profit off the backs of the suffering, those that maintain the corrupt establishment. Monsters, those willing to do whatever it takes to change the face of an unfair world. She will not allow a Lannister or men of his ilk to ever again make her doubt herself and what she knows and what she stands for. She will not crumble. She will not waver.

He has valuable insight into the minds of men like him, the minds of her enemies, and the political and cultural landscape of her so foreign home. That is why she will keep him close, spare consideration for his words, but she will not give him undue influence. No more will she be led astray.

"They don't like the idea of a woman leading a khalasar."

"They will like it far less when I am done with them."

As the masters sent into her city are cut down by her faithful Grey Worm, as the armada they sailed into her bay give up so easily under the beat of her children's wings, she turns her attention to the enemy at her near west, the enemy that commanded them forth in its hubris of being her ruin.

Volantis will fall before she decides to venture any further westward.

With no delay, Dothraki ride out across the Painted Mountains and down the Demon Road to take her enemies swiftly. There is nowhere left for the Great Masters to retreat to, nowhere left to hide, to lounge in undeserved luxury and plot against her. She has claimed this place for her own, these people for her own, which she will never relinquish. There will never be a return of slavery to this Bay of Dragons.

"If blood is your desire, then blood shall flow."

What to do with her enemies, that is a simple solution.

It's the other things inside her that prove the true dilemmas.

Daario, for example.

He takes liberties, forgetting himself the more he's grown comfortable in her bed, and appears at the end of the hard night in her chambers without summons, something she has warned him of before. She is standing over the war table, staring at shadows and flame across the planning maps. He comes up behind her, his hands on her, his beard scratching her skin as he kisses her neck, something he's done a dozen times. One hand smoothes across her stomach, another bunching the skirt of her dress, easing it upward. He's playful and warm, trying to distract her. And for a moment, for a moment, she leans into his touch.

Her eyes close and her spine arches and she sighs. His chest is strong behind her, pressing into her, supporting her. His hands are familiar.

When he urges her forward into the table, meaning to bend her over it, she almost lets him. She has every intention of letting him. Why shouldn't she? Daario is her lover. He is loyal and loving. Her body is tense. Stressed. It has been neglected and battered for months now. She has not been touched with kindness, with comfort, has not been ministered over or worshipped the way he will worship her. She could do with some easy pleasure right about now.

And yet…

And yet…

Her heart spikes inexplicably, not with arousal, but with distress. Her limbs start shaking and go nerveless, as if her breaths suddenly can't get air to them. She feels like a caged animal, frozen, torn between flight or fight, needing to break free. She tries to bury it down, tries to ignore it, tries to conquer it. She spins out of his grasp, shoves him into the nearest chair, straddles him. Determined to take what she needs to relax herself. To take the attentions he offers without ulterior motives.

When she kisses him, it is madly, harsher than she's ever kissed him. Almost frenzied, almost punishing. Punishing for no reason. Angry for no reason. Her fingers twist painfully in his hair, forcing his neck back sharply enough to make him grunt, his surprised laugh only aggravating her further. He is still playful and warm, still loves her, and that burns in her veins, churns in her stomach, scrapes at her skin like wolf claws.

Thoughtlessly, she swipes her tongue up the seal of his mouth in an odd motion that jars her to a grinding halt. Wolf claws. Wolf claws.

What do wolves have to do with anything?

Taking advantage of her ebb, Daario hooks an arm across her backside and surges to his feet, carries her over to her bed. Lays her in the silk, bearing down on her. As he has done before, as he was welcome to. Her dress is pulled apart and his beard scrapes the valley of her breasts before she unfreezes, snaps free of her fleeting passivity. The panic is back, overtaking the anger once more, drowning out impatience and domination with a helplessly urgent aversion. She shoves him off. Casts him out.

"Stop. Leave me."

"Dany—"

"Go!"

She doesn't understand why she's so upset. Why she trembles. Why her heart races. Where did this come from? This fear, this pain, this longing? Where was this so visceral reaction sprung from?

"My queen, now and always."

Why does it hurt? Why does love hurt? Where does this love come from? This love aching in her chest that she cannot name and will not recognize?

Memories at the edges of her awareness. She refuses to look.

"Are you a slave?"

"Are you a sheep?"

"You're a dragon. Be a dragon."

Fragments of a forgotten dream plague her, hard as she tries to ignore it. Echoes of a past she never lived, a future she cannot abide.

She is doing the right thing. She has a good heart. Far more people love her than despise her. Far more people cry out for her to liberate them than those who fear her arrival. She is doing the right thing. So why does she feel so terrified, so paralyzed at a crossroads, whenever she comes to make a decision moving forward? These fragments are to blame, she knows, but they are more vague assaults of emotion lashing at her than any substantial intelligence.

"What kept me standing? Faith. In myself. In Daenerys Targaryen."

That was where I went wrong, she thinks, sure of it, though she can't recall ever truly going wrong. Except for the screams of burning children which haunt her soul, which she tells herself she dreamed up. Losing faith. Listening to faithless men.

It will not happen again.

There is merely shadows of a white wolf in her dreams. Nothing more.

"**A meeting of pirate queens and dragonriders…"**

The Greyjoy siblings are an interesting sort with an interesting offer.

They've brought her a hundred ships with fierce ironborn to sail them, a pledge of fealty, in exchange for her support of the exiled Yara's quest to reclaim her Salt Throne from a vicious usurper uncle who hunts her down like a dog. An uncle who is, at this very moment, in the process of building a brand new shining Iron fleet to buy Dany's hand in marriage.

So he can fuck her, use her, slit her throat once she's won all he wants, and take what's hers.

There's a visceral lurch in her stomach when she hears the name Euron Greyjoy, a fervent flare of pure seething rage in her chest that brings her to her feet when she had been relaxed and welcoming a moment ago. Her blood is boiling, keening at the need for fire and blood. She's not sure why, but she's becoming better at navigating the strangeness since her … awakening. She's learned to trust those instincts when they rear up. They may only be slivers, shards, fragments, flashes of intense emotion rather than clear memory, but they are powerful and persuasive.

She gets the impression…

Ah, yes. This man sunk her sweet green dragon into the sea, her son, and slaughtered half her allies. She remembers now. Remembers the bite of wind, the pitch of Drogon's dive, her wild scream. The tidal wave Rhaegal's corpse made in the waters. No context, just an imperative.

Euron Greyjoy will die slowly. Excruciatingly.

He will never come anywhere near her dragons.

She calms herself, reels the turmoil in, calculates quickly.

"Spread the word to your men that Daenerys Targaryen has turned you away," she says, just as negotiations were going so well. Startling the siblings, startling even Tyrion. "Send several of your ships outward in either direction, to toil or idle, I don't care. So long as they stop in every port they pass, drinking and carousing with loud mouths."

Yara is grimly searching her cold expression. "I don't understand."

Dany wings one brow. "Don't you?"

"Ah," Tyrion comprehends, neither disapproving nor impressed.

"Tell them Daenerys Targaryen has no interest in crown pretenders and a hundred ships is not nearly enough to satisfy her armada. She will wait for the rightful king of the Iron Islands to come before her with a better offer."

Confusion and dejection on their faces morphs to excitement and pride at the prospects unfolding before their imaginations. With a devious grin, Yara drawls, "And here I was with low expectations."

"While we wait, your fleet cannot be seen in my bay. In the meantime, I have a way you may be of use to me. A way before bloodshed to prove your commitment to this … relationship."

"Anything," Yara vows.

The Greyjoys have come before Dany, treating for alliance, and so she shall give them one. Of one sort or another. Between Yara's enjoyable flirting and Theon's forthright devotion to his sister's superior merit, she is charmed. She finds herself wanting them as allies, wanting them loyal, even if she's not ready to give them just what they ask for in the way they ask for it. It's a reasonable request, a fair bargain, but she will not sail west just yet. Despite Tyrion's worry that promising the Greyjoys their desires will open the door to all of Westeros demanding independence and thinking her malleable once she conquers the Seven Kingdoms, she meets Yara's grasp, gripping strongly.

No more reaving or raping. A new era. A better world.

She thinks she's going to like this alliance.

"**Of tending to the bruised bodies and singed souls…"**

"What is it like there? In Naath?" she asks Missandei. "Is it as warm as Meereen? Is there more color?"

She's unwinding her queen's complex arrangement of braids for the night, sitting by candlelight, speaking softly, while Grey Worm stands ever vigilant at the entryway. "From what little I remember…"

"It's alright if you'd rather not," Dany gently offers.

She shakes her head, the troubled expression fading for a heartfelt smile, small but powerful. Her fingers fall still, entwined with silver. A dreamy haze enters her dark eyes as she tentatively expounds, "It is very warm, but not of the dry heat like this desert. It gets sticky, I think. Stifling in a way that makes the air hard to breathe in. But the saltwater breeze off the sea keeps a good balance. And the color… There are so many colors, Your Grace. It is lush. Vibrant. Cerulean skies, azure waters, white sands, a hundred shades of green in the trees. Brown bark, silver bark. Green leaf, pink leaf. There are beaches and valleys and rolling hills and jagged mountains, but they are all smothered in rich green. That is what I remember. Mostly green. And the smell of the sea coming in through the open thatch."

"I should like to see it."

"You should," Missandei assents, resuming her work.

Dany reaches up and clasps a hand around her friend's gentle fingers. Gentle and precise and soft to touch and always kind. She brings those fingers down to her lap, forcing Missandei to join her on the bench. She searches her ever impassive features thoroughly for a long moment before turning her eyes to her lap, watching her thumb stroke absently across those delicate knuckles. Dany's hands have become brusque things, like a man's, calloused and coarse from riding Drogon. It almost feels as if she shouldn't touch those hands, Missandei's skin so clean and unblemished, almost as if she's tainting her, as if she would hurt her.

I won't. I won't let that happen. I won't let the blood on my hands soak into her. I won't let the violence touch her.

"Do you think I would be welcome there?" she wonders, hardly a whisper now, lost in her reverie. "If I promised to leave the fire and violence behind when I come, would you want me there? Or does that thought discomfort you?"

There's a puzzled frown marring her brow now, but a faint quirk to her lips filled with generosity. "It is a lovely thought." Then she quips, "But you wouldn't have to leave fire behind, Your Grace, only violence."

Instead of laughing it off and moving on, Dany pursues with increasing intent, her intensity growing the deeper she gazes into her. She tugs firmly on their clasped hands. "What do you want, Missandei?"

Her eyes slide past the queen to find the Unsullied below, and suddenly Dany is intruding on an excruciatingly intimate moment, but she can't turn away. The reflex is just that, a reflex, fleeting. Shyness brings her chin down, her eyes sliding away again. She chooses her words with careful consideration. "I want impossible things."

"I make impossible things happen every day. Tell me."

"I want to go home. And I want to stay."

"Stay in Meereen?"

"Stay with my queen. Help my queen."

"And if your queen had no more use for you?" she poses.

Undaunted by the surface cruelty of those words, Missandei merely lifts her chin, crooks a brow at her. "I would suggest she underestimates my usefulness. She will always be in need of me."

At that, Dany does laugh then. Because it is humorous in the tone she says it, and because it is true, and because she will cry if she doesn't laugh. Because that truth changes none of what Dany must do in the coming days.

"You cannot claim them all, princess."

"I can. And I will."

With Missandei's words ringing in her ears, she begins to enact her next intentions. She approaches Grey Worm privately, gives him his task without much elaboration. She frames it as a necessary front in her war on slavers, an easy framing since it is sincere, if not her first motive.

The isle of Naath is a favorite supply ground for slavers and raiders, because of their pacifism. They make music, not war. They refuse to pick up a weapon, won't even kill their animals, only feeding from the land, fruits and vines that nature provides. They make the perfect slaves, so very subservient, so pliable. To cut the slave trade at the knees, it is not enough to outlaw the practice and punish the demand, but their supply must be starved out. So she sets her Unsullied commander about querying through his legion, seeking volunteers eager to commit to such a duty.

A century or so of Unsullied to safeguard the isle of Naath from invaders.

"For how long?" he questions.

"For always," she answers.

If he is surprised, if he is suspicious, if he is pleased, if he disapproves, there is no sign of it in his stoic features. She finds herself disappointed at the lacking reaction, hoping to have some insight into his thoughts. Which is ironic, because she has enough irritation to bear from Tyrion's fervent disagreements. She needs all the soldiers she can get for the coming conquering, yes, she knows. She tires of his incessant dissent, his single-minded focus on the west. But she bore that with Ser Jorah and Ser Barristan all through her march up the Slaver's Bay cities and they eventually came to see things her way. Tyrion will learn true empathy, or he will learn to be quiet on the matter.

Eventually, the upheaval from the siege settles and her city finds its footing once more. And so, she leaves Daario and his Second Sons to watch over her bay, the Common Council legislature to continue its Restoration and Reform agenda, and Tyrion with much less oversight authority than he had the last time she left Meereen in trusted hands. She takes Missandei and Grey Worm and the chosen Unsullied, boarded on a small contingent of Yara's dispersed fleet, and they set sail together southwest down the Summer Sea.

"Perhaps they don't want to be conquered."

"You didn't conquer them. You liberated them."

Diplomacy. That is what this trip shall be driven by. She must remember that. She intends to keep her promise to Missandei, leaving fire and violence behind as they sail south, and she foresees no trouble in that regard. She just needs to make her case carefully to the Naathi people, so that they don't mistake her intentions for aggression. She has no interest in conquering the free peaceful people. Only to ally. Only to shield. Unsullied will keep them safe and ask for nothing in return but shelter on their island, simply because it serves her purposes in the bay.

Simply for Missandei.

But she is no fool. She doesn't expect this diplomatic mission to be effortless, must anticipate a good deal of resistance and distrust from a people so heavily hit by the slave trade, so accustomed to ships of soldiers coming ashore and stealing away with their children, burning their villages. She has planned for this to take time and delicacy. She has planned to prove herself.

Though she is uncertain whether the Greyjoys are the right choice for escort.

"It's only a voyage to paradise, Yara. Don't look so disappointed," she teases, just the hint of a smile at her mouth edges as she comes to stand beside the woman on deck, wind blowing her silver locks off her shoulder, salt stinging her eyes.

"Is that how I look?" she grouses.

"It's been a week and you haven't stopped sulking yet."

"When you asked me to prove my commitment to you, I imagined something a little more challenging than playing ferry to your eunuchs."

"There'll be time enough for that, I suspect."

Along the way, she's found her jagged and uncouth. She drinks too much, whores too unsubtly, and is quick to become violent. Necessary traits, she suspects, for an ironborn woman, especially one intent on holding the Salt Throne, dependent on keeping her roughneck sailors in line. Her promise of no more reaving and raping, the prospect of enforcing that among her men, looks to be as arduous a challenge as Dany has found herself enforcing the same among the Dothraki. But she has also found that Yara is a woman of her word and fully intends for whatever lengths it requires to fulfill that promise. It is early still in their acquaintance, but she suspects she's match for the challenge.

Rather than stride off and sulk some more at the call-out, Yara turns her body into the queen's, offering her undivided attention and a decidedly better attitude. She resorts to what is fast becoming her frequent flirting routine, reminding Dany of Daario's initial dogged pursuit, though she finds this somewhat more gratifying than that amusing annoyance had been.

"What of more pleasurable pursuits, My Queen? Will we have time for those?"

For she is afforded so little opportunity to feel playful, Dany wholeheartedly intends to have a little fun flirting back before the caw of a passing flock reaches her ears under the roaring waves. She looks skyward and her spirits plummet. She goes pale, queasy, a dark shadow at the edge of her vision, a dizziness striking her suddenly. Blackbirds flying overhead…

"A bad omen," Yara tells her, frowning at their flight when she follows Dany's gaze. But then she touches the queen's elbow with a rough grasp and grins again. "I don't pay those much mind. Omens haven't hurt me yet."

"Omens can't hurt us," Dany acquiesces faintly, but she is distracted, distressed. She pulls away, retreats below deck to rest.

"Yes. All men must die. But we are not men."

Only in the dark, she feels free to let out what must remain locked within. She sobs and shudders and searches for solace where there is none to find. There is no solace for her. There is no salvation.

She dreams of a baby at her breast, not a mangled sack of deformed bones but a hale and wonderful creature, no scales or tails or broken wings.

She dreams of wolves and dragons and lions.

She dreams of running with wolves across endless green moors. She dreams of jet black curls between her fingers and sad bronze eyes. She dreams of firelight and cold cave walls sketched with ancient warnings. She dreams of snow… Vast and inescapable and just as alluring as it is terrifying. Ice and snow, grey cliffs and a crisp white waterfall. A man's arms around her, holding her close. Happiness.

"We could stay a thousand years. No one would find us."

"It's cold up here for a southern girl."

"So keep your queen warm."

She doesn't know why she's become so fixated on wolves and snow, but it is not healthy for her peace of mind. It is not… No, she won't wonder why. She knows. She mustn't. She refuses to. But she knows. Something ancient and essential inside her knows. And she is losing the battle. She fears for how much longer she can hold back the tide. How long can she look away? It presses on her, becoming crushing.

The screams, the stench, the stone as it crumbles and shatters.

The sharp cold of metal driving inside. The warm arms around her, the wrong arms, the wrong kindness, the wrong love.

Missandei tends to check in on her periodically, even if she's dismissed her service for the night. For once, Dany doesn't hide her face in the pillow and go still, pretending at peaceful sleep. She's curled in bed, clutching her unmarred heart, crying quietly to the jostling rock of the ship on the water. It draws her interpreter inward. Her hand tentative on her bare shoulder, a soft, "My Queen?"

"Don't call me that."

"I don't understand."

"Dany. Please, Missandei. Call me Dany."

The silence that follows is loaded and unending. She feels her hesitation, her discomfort, and her worry. Letting herself be weak, letting herself be needy, she snatches up the hand on her shoulder and pulls it closer, turns over towards her, urges her into the bed beside her. She doesn't need to ask for more. Missandei just holds her.

"This hurt will pass. Dany… It will pass."

This hurt? Yes, this hurt. That's what it is that's eating her alive from the inside. This indescribable hurt in her chest like a dagger driven in. This hurt that is love. Grief. Guilt. Shame. Longing. Bitterness. Betrayal. Rage. This hurt that threatens to leave her hollow.

With the kind of love I've been dreaming of, she thinks, it's better to spend life lonely and unloved.

Next chapter

As she walks a winding road of ash and snow, the raven alights in her path, so she turns the other way.

When it perches on her balcony, she seals the shutters.

Yet its cawing echoes in her head all throughout the day as if she's carrying a cruel ghost with her. A hundred thousand ghosts in her wake.

Perhaps she is a fool after all, because she had expected Naath to be paradise. And it is that, very much so. It is lovely. Breathtaking. Tranquil. And the people are more welcoming than any she's ever come across. They live a joyful existence, joy and easy friendship and appreciation for life everywhere she turns. But she has found no paradise here, not for herself. She is haunted, plagued by her nightmares, sickened. She hides it well, smiling widely and laughing carelessly with the villagers, reveling around the beach bonfires at orange hued sunsets and under starry night skies. She hides it well.

They are not nightmares.

Negotiations with the Naathi chiefs goes smoother than she expected. After initial suspicions and introductions, the Matron steps forward and cradles Missandei's face in both her wrinkled hands, telling Dany in halting Valyrian, "You have returned our stolen sons and daughters home. For that, you will be welcome here, Silver Queen."

Tensions aren't magically evaporated, but with Missandei serving as ambassador, it is a promising start. From those opening days, it only gets more hopeful, despite the occasional altercation or pushback from certain chiefs, most of whom hold onto their distrust of outsiders and disdain for the inevitable natures of soldiers and pirates. The Matron presiding over her chiefs is more amenable to arrangements, but they don't roll over unthinkingly.

A commerce pact is agreed upon, a new trade route opened to Meereen.

The Unsullied contingent is accepted onto the island as their new home, as its new protectors, and set about constructing barracks for their housing under Naathi guidance, once Daenerys has bartered plots of land for them. Simple structures, set high on stilts to avoid the wash of the rising tide for that time of season she's informed it floods inland. They are just open boxes of wood and thatch and windows down the long walls with no shutters yet, sleeping mats in rows on the roughly hewn floor. It will improve in comfort, given time and goods. They wanted to be sure of their place here before they sailed anything but the bare bones of building materials all this way. For now, they will suffice.

The only urgent measures are woven drapes for the openings to seal out the sacred butterflies when they ungarb and rest.

The next structures to be built, the caveat in negotiations that came up against the most fervent resistance from the natives, are the security measures. The defensible strongholds and watchtowers. Naathi are quick and clever, with underground paths and hidden traps, ways to get away in a hurry, ways to hide in plain sight, but nowhere to defend themselves against attack. Because they do not defend. Their Lord of Harmony forbids violence of any kind, even that which would save them.

"We told you, outlander," Missandei says, interpreting their unhappy words. "You are welcome on our isle so long as you accept our Harmony."

"We are only here to protect your people from slavers. To end the raiding. How can the Unsullied accomplish that if they lay down their weapons under all circumstances? If they are not allowed to prepare for the worst?"

"Our Lord of Harmony is our shield, not your soldiers. Our butterflies protect us, not your spears."

"I understand that," Daenerys responds, more tightly than she means to, because it takes great restraint to remember patience when she has a fire curling in her belly. It takes great restraint to catch her tongue on aggressive words like, Your butterflies didn't protect my Missandei, did they?!

She has no patience for faith in unseen gods when it stands in the way of necessity or survival or justice. She understands their reasons for belief. The butterflies have somewhat protected them over their millennia. Their butterfly fever has deterred quite a few voyagers. Bitten by the black and white butterflies, foreigners fall deadly ill, but the natives are immune. Yes, she can see why they would lay faith there. But she is Daenerys Stormborn, Mother of Dragons, and she does not rely on any gods.

But this is their home and she is not here to conquer, so she must be patient.

It is a good thing she left Drogon behind.

He always does react heatedly to her flaring temper.

In the end, it is not Dany that convinces them. She is sent away, banished from the Dome as the chiefs argue. Days later, it is Missandei that has secured the covenant of their settlement here.

Missandei has secured so much more than she could've asked for. She lifts a thin twine with an odorous satchel to Dany's neck and ties it together under her braids. "For protection. It will ward off the butterflies."

Wrinkling her nose, Dany complains, "Quite an unpleasant tang."

"Better than fever and blood sweats, Your Grace," Missandei counters with an amused smile. "They've agreed to blend enough satchels to adorn the outlanders."

That wouldn't require much. Most of those chosen Unsullied taken to Naath were originally Naathi slaves. Immune like the rest of the natives.

"You do excellent work, ambassador."

"Thank you, My Queen."

"Dany," she entreats.

"Dany."

It's a beautiful start.

During her stay, the queen is offered a shanty on an isolated stretch of beach, privacy and the bare minimum of luxury. It is crude and it is beautiful and she dreams of being happy here. Of staying. She could, she thinks, given time enough. But it would mean hiding. From the world, from her enemies, from herself. And eventually, the world would catch up, and it would bring fire and blood here to find her, and these people and their peace would be left to ash and ruin. Because of her.

No, Daenerys Stormborn was never meant for paradise.

A dragon is not built for peace.

But late in the night, with the moon casting silver shadows across her bed and the reassuring roar of the tide, ebbing in and washing at the sand before flowing out again, the lap and the hum and the cry of insects and animals in the trees around her… In the night, she likes to pretend that she could be. That she could leave Daenerys behind and be nobody. Just a girl. A girl in a shanty on a beach, waiting for someone to come along and love her. Waiting, but content in the meantime.

She likes to dream. To fantasize. But the echoes will always resound. The ghosts will make themselves known. The raven will return.

There's no hiding from her sins.

There's no escaping her destiny either.

When the imagined screams in the distance grow too loud, she deserts her bed and wanders the undiscovered wilds, sometimes letting her guard trail unobtrusively in the dark, sometimes ordering them to stay behind. She'll pace the empty beach and watch moonlight glimmer off the black sea. She'll explore the daunting jungle that lies beyond the sand. She'll hike mountain roads and admire the sunrise kissing across Naath. Sometimes, she'll take Missandei with her, clutching her hand, watching her face closely as she rediscovers all that she'd been forced to forget and the joy blossoms.

What about Dany? What she is forced to forget. Does she remember? What does she remember? It's all a snarled knot in her head. They're just dreams. Hazy forgotten dreams. They're not real. They're not prophecies. They're too convoluted for that, too intimate, too specific, too horrific. They're just dreams. A sign of creeping madness perhaps. A sign that she hasn't escaped her father's curse.

She hides it well. She watches Missandei's joy blossom. She revels in that.

When the barracks are finished, Grey Worm comes to her with a private request. "This one would like…"

"Go on."

"This one would like if to build Missandei of Naath a home for her own."

Dany's heart lurches. "She's decided to stay?"

"No. But she should have a home here in her homeland."

"For while we're here? And for when she returns?"

"Yes."

"Whatever you need," she promises.

Despite resisting the flood of memories, it inevitably rushes in like the tide…

It rushes in and she wakes with silent screams strangled to stricken silence in her throat as she swings violently upwards, flings herself out of bed, stumbling hysterically to the window to clutch its ledge and suck in sharp heaves of Summer Sea air. She's sobbing and and shaking and her cheeks are wet yet she makes no sound but for the broken gasping.

It brings her to her knees.

What did I do?

What have I become?

They could have saved her. Any one of them could have saved her, and in doing so, saved King's Landing. He could have saved her. She could have saved herself. As she had always done. Why didn't she save herself? Why did she allow them to make her so weak? There was a very long time when all she ever had was herself. To rely on, to trust, to console. She was alone and unloved with enemies wherever she chose to turn. Wherever she ran. Betrayers, abusers. Why did she forget how to be alone? Why did she let herself need them? It destroyed her. It destroyed everything.

The man I love betrayed me. The man I love murdered me.

Kiss me, then kill me. How could you? How dare you?

Liar.

Traitor.

No.

No.

A stranger did that.

She loves no man.

Down the beach, soulful music interrupts the night cadences, soothing her panic, chasing away the ghosts and their agonized screams. She sits on the floor beneath the open window, hugging her knees to her chest, painstakingly calming the wild distress that threatens to thrust her into a pit of despair. An abyss of madness.

Once she can breathe again, once she has gathered up all her jagged pieces and wrapped them together again, Dany pulls herself up and ventures out. She can't bear to be alone tonight. She can't bear the quiet.

Bonfires flare high like beacons in the dark, Naathi circling the flames with dancing and singing, luring her closer. The siren song of their joyful connections is irresistible. It draws her inexorably, but she can't bring herself to join them truly. There's too much shame. There's too much fear. She feels too alien. Too cursed.

Hours into the festivities, Missandei finally tracks her down, sits in the sand beside her, their toes just barely brushed by the frothy splash of the tide. Dany stiffens, waiting for the concerned questioning that always follows, but something on her face in the moonlight must warn the woman off pursuing it. They sit in simple silence for a long while, listening to the music, the drums, the lap of waves, occasional shouts and laughter. Once or twice, she starts to reach for the hand near her, desperate for something to latch onto, desperate to remind herself that she is human and connected. Not a dragon all alone in the world. But she stops herself, pulls back, bites down on the weakness.

Dany is always aware of the power imbalance between them and when she is taking advantage of it. When she needs skin contact, a hand, a hug, someone to hold her at night. It is innocent, something any friends would do thoughtlessly. But she is queen and Missandei her servant and that makes it different. Sometimes, she is too needy to not be selfish. Tonight, she finds that any sort of selfishness leaves ash on her tongue.

"Grey Worm has shown me the shanty you commissioned for me."

Snapped from her shell, she frowns at her friend but Missandei's gaze keeps to the distance, where starry black sky and reflective undulations of sea meld. "Oh, I did?" Frown falling, she grins slyly, shattered heart lightening. "I don't suppose he mentioned it was he that came to his queen with the request?"

There's something like a sigh of relief that takes Missandei's tension away, a small wonderful smile at her lips as she dips her chin and murmurs, "Of course he didn't."

"If it had been my idea, would that have disappointed you?" she teases.

But her reply is sober. "I was worried you were trying to get rid of me."

"What? Why would I—" Dany stops herself. "I would never want to be rid of you, my dear Missandei. But I do want the best for you."

"This is why I love you."

The ache swells up in her chest again, just as she'd almost forgotten it. She's short of breath again, pain constricting her throat. "As I love you," she whispers raggedly, words stolen away by the sea breeze.

In her mind, in her memory, in a life that never happened, will never happen, they stand together at the rail of a ship, the cold bite of ice in the air, huddled tight together for warmth, giggling and gossiping. A brief respite from a wasteland of grief and war. Her voice sounds almost girlish, a cadence she hasn't heard from herself in years, as she leans in and whispers, "There's this thing Jon likes to do. An odd habit. He likes to … lick me. No, don't give me that look. That's not how I mean it. His tongue is just so… Well, anyway, I mean… I mean everywhere. Lick me everywhere. My neck, my fingers, my everything. It's just something he does, like he doesn't even notice he's doing it. When he's kissing me, he'll run his tongue up from my chin across my lips to the tip of my nose in this frenetic wolf swipe. It's… It's the strangest kiss I've ever known."

Echoes on the wind. Images in her mind that slip away like sand between fingers. But the ache remains.

"You love him differently though," she says, her voice gone hoarse and cracking. She swallows hard, furls her fingertips into her palms until the pain steadies her. Solidifies her in the real world. "Grey Worm. You love him. You want him."

"Yes."

"He makes you happy?"

"Just the thought of him makes me happier than I've ever been in this life."

"Then don't waste any more time. We've all wasted so much of it. We've all let so many chances at happiness slip by us. Once they're gone, we never get them back. I don't want that for you. Whatever has made you hesitate, it's worth pushing through. He's worth it. You're worth it. You must grab onto the important things and never let them go. Don't be afraid anymore." This time, she doesn't bite back the urge to snatch the woman's hand, lacing their fingers, squeezing tight. Her voice has gotten stronger. She has gotten stronger. "We're done with fear now."

"No more fear," Missandei agrees.

The man she loved kissed her. Then he killed her.

He killed her because he had to. Because she needed to die.

Or did she do that to herself? It's all still so unclear.

As she follows Missandei up the beach, letting her friend tug her along, their fingers still loosely interlocked, a lightness blooms again in her chest. The dichotomy is tiring, but it is helping. She ignores the raven flickering at the edges of her memory. She follows Missandei to her new home, exploring and admiring what Grey Worm has built. The love in every board, every twining of thatch.

"Suitable for the queen's ambassador to Naath?"

"Very much so."

"And spacious enough to perhaps fit an Unsullied as well," she teases, grinning wickedly, and gives their hands a quick tug that sends Missandei colliding with her, arm flung around her shoulders. The women tumble onto the plush pile of cushioning beneath the skylight in a burst of childish joyful laughter.

She loves no man.

She razed no city.

She is alive.

"**Isle of Butterflies, blue skies of hope…"**

The harrow of hiding from the raven has gone. With the break of the floodgates in her mind, the end of denial, comes a rush of incongruous relief beside the heartsick horror. Relief, for the fear was crushing her, and now what she feared has happened, and she is still standing. The raven has no more secrets to hurt her with. It can chase her, it can plague her, but she will not bow. She remembers. What was. What will never be. She remembers a life unlived. No more fear.

She rolls out of bed as dawn wakes her with gold sunlight and seagull cries and the cacophonous shriek of Naathi children racing through the surf. Her bed of course is merely a mountain of eclectic cushioning, softening up a sparse pallet on the scarred floorboards. Her silk gown slips off one shoulder as she clambers groggily out of the tangle and pads out to watch them play. It's become something of a ritual for her. The two Unsullied posted at the bottom steps greet her with a unison, "Mhysa," as she takes a cup off a hanging hook and scoops freshwater from the barrel by the door. She sits and sips, shaking off her sleep, enjoying the sounds, the sights, the smells, and the sensations in her chest.

Awhile into her morning, troublemaking Yara hops cheerily up onto the balcony beside where she lounges. Tosses her a strange fruit. "Eat this. It's nearly better than a good cunt licking."

Rolling her eyes at the pirate's crassness, she examines her gift. "What is it?"

"No idea."

Dany digs her thumb through the gold rind and tears out a chunk of its pink insides, plump and dripping juices down her wrist, sticky between her fingers. Flavor explodes in her mouth, a hard kick of sweet and sour that startles her. "Mmm, my goodness," she moans, sucking the flavor clear, enjoying the gush as she chews. "I am most definitely bartering a stock of these to take back with us."

"I can do you one better, Dragon Queen. I've got seeds and baby trees already squirreled away on my ship and the knowledge of how to grow them," Yara crows, brows winging as she rakes her gaze up and down the length of her, lingering over the sheerness of her silk. "Does that satisfy you, My Queen?"

Dany can't help but grin. Can't help her playful purr, "For your sake, I'm going to assume by squirreled, you mean bartered a fair exchange with the natives."

"What else would I mean?" she volleys.

"Very well, Lady Greyjoy," she returns, earning a grimace that makes her laugh. "Should you—"

An unmistakable flutter of bird wings turns her head, a sharp spike of panic and dread shivering through her body, drenching her good spirits down. The fruit falls from her nerveless fingers. No more fear. She casts it aside, the reflex, the instinctive recoil. She refuses to let it rule her. She refuses to lose control of her body, or her mind, or her soul. And especially not her heart.

It's something white that lands on the rail beside her, wings flapping, cawing rudely. An exclamation of giddy relief bursts from her in a wild laugh as the seagull stirs up a fuss. She finds herself crouching for the dropped fruit, pulling pieces loose and tossing them into the sand, watching the bird search and complain.

The rest of the day is spent politicking, but when she gets a chance around dusk to slip away and explore, she comes upon a breathtaking waterfall among the jungle thick. She's contemplating unlacing her dress and diving into the crystalline whirlpools, but she draws back as she glimpses bodies in the blue. Past the pounding din, kinky brown curls, slender arms locked around a neck, a smooth bare back. When she realizes it's Missandei and Grey Worm, she turns around and backtracks before they can notice her, finding herself grinning like a silly girl, despite the faint ache of envy and regret felt below her vicarious joy.

And it has indeed become faint. It is no longer all consuming.

The first real test of this evolution comes one of these restless nights on the beach, when she crests a dune and finds a man sitting in the surf where she would go. She starts to retreat to her own end of the beach before she falters, reminding herself, Connect, reach out, be open. She can't afford to indulge her impulses to isolate. She has to retrain herself, despite the paranoia, despite the endless enemies.

Despite the wolves in sheep clothes.

As she approaches, she recognizes his shadow as Yara's brother and she doubts her decision, faltering again, almost turning back. Because now that the tide has rushed in, he's not just Yara's brother. He's Theon Greyjoy. Theon Greyjoy. Tied so intrinsically into the Starks. Into the snow. But if she is to truly grow, truly recover, she can't allow herself to hide from what hurts the most.

It's not until she sits down beside him in the moonlight and watches the way he goes stiff and submissive, torn between taut skittishness and abject dejection, that she remembers he is another of the broken ones. Defiled bodies, fractured minds, battered souls. It reminds her that she is not alone in how she feels. It reminds her of what she has always tried fighting for.

"Your Grace," he murmurs anxiously, head bowed, knuckles clenching on his knees, shying away without being brave enough to actually move. There's an empty flagon in the sand, so she assumes he's imbibed. Quite a bit, she'd say, going by the way his normally downcast eyes rove over her exposed skin, taking longer than could be considered discreet in absorbing the sheerness and low cut of her sleeping gown and all the loosened splay of her silver tresses, blinking dazedly, widening in horror before he wrenches his attention back to the sea.

It almost makes her laugh. They're always so struck when they see her like this, braids undone, armor cast aside. They're expecting the Dragon Queen and don't know how to act when they get just Dany. It never used to happen before, before her awakening, before this island.

"There is something soothing about this place, isn't there?"

"It is," he responds, reluctant, withdrawn.

After a long painful silence, tempted to get up and leave him, she ventures gently instead, "Your sister intimated a little of your traumas. I cannot imagine enduring the kind of brutality you've seen."

He withdraws deeper, stiffens further, but she doesn't regret voicing the thought. She thinks of a festered wound, covered and unacknowledged, the way the fester must be drawn out before it can close well. If she is going to sit here with this man in the dark, two broken creatures, she can't pretend.

At the shame in his eyes, she's driven to note, "You know, there are many eunuchs among my people. Look around. We're surrounded by men that've lost such essential parts of themselves. They've come to learn that it is not as essential as assumed."

That startles a bitter snort from him. "Forgive me, Your Grace, but that's shite." Still, his tone is timid even as his words grow tentatively bolder. "You've got soldiers that were cut as babies. Boys that don't know what they're missing."

"Perhaps," she allows.

He's so soft spoken, he's almost lost to the waves. "If they did know, I doubt they'd be having conversations about their cocks with their queen. I definitely didn't expect to be."

Now she does laugh, a warm sound, not wanting to scare him away. He flinches from her so easily, it's hard to decide how to treat him, what to say. Like a beaten dog. What does a dragon do with a beaten dog? But that is the sort of thinking that led her down her darkest road. She mustn't forget she is not just dragon. She is woman.

"Do you see that light?" she asks, pointing in the distance over the dunes, rows of firelight flickering in the dark of the treeline. "Beyond that window is the lovely Missandei of Naath. The one I've caught you appreciating once or twice."

Theon stutters in denial, but she waves him off.

"It's alright. I spend time myself appreciating Missandei. My point is, right this moment, she lays in her bed, happily tangled up with my Unsullied commander. Appreciating each other."

"He wasn't unmanned?"

"I wouldn't say it that way. Grey Worm is quite a man. But he was cut."

He frowns at her in confusion, forgetting a little of his discomfort now that she has him intrigued. "Then how…"

Dany blushes in the moonlight, embarrassing herself now, despite how casual she's become with the crassness she gets from sailors and soldiers around her. Awkwardly laughing, she says, "I'm afraid I've no firsthand experience to advise you from. I just know that they are in love and many things happen in their bed. Things they both seem more than pleased by."

"Oh." He resituates in the sand, less averse to her closeness now, though she can tell he's disappointed by her lack of the particulars, even if getting into details would've left them both too mortified to share the same ship again.

"I look at them and I don't see him missing anything irrevocable from his life."

"Yes, Your Grace," Theon acquiesces, chin back to his chest. She thinks he'll leave it at that, but after a few moments, he braves, "But you aren't in bed with them, are you? You can't really know."

"We can never really know the soul of a man," she concurs. "But I know enough. I know he's happy."

"I don't deserve to be happy," Theon whispers.

"Neither do I," she confesses, startling him into meeting her stare.

After that night, something inside her shifts significantly. She finds herself drawn to the Greyjoy brother, rather than repulsed. Pulled to him for the same underlying reason she had initially been afraid to near him. Of what he reminded her of, of what he connected her to, that ephemeral relation. The wolves howling on the wind at the other end of the world, echoing under their shared words.

They meet again in the sand when they can't sleep. And again. And again. One day, she looks for him while he works with the construction teams. One day, she tags along when he rows out to the anchored fleet with restocking. One day, she finds him following her up the path that's become her own, so she asks him to escort her along her hike. That too becomes something of a ritual.

Missandei had told her of their glorious secret treetop city, but they hadn't trusted her to reveal it, so she and Theon settle for the mountains.

An unexpected familiarity begins to develop.

The more hours they spend sitting together in the dark, the easier his words flow. Stories of growing up a ward of Winterfell, a hostage, and she a gilded slave in the east. Eventually, it winds around to what she knew was inevitable. Theon reveals what haunts his sleep, what pulls him out to the sea. He talks of Sansa Stark. Of what they endured together at stolen Winterfell under a sadistic Bolton. He talks of leaving her behind. Needing to be steadfast at his true sister's side, but wanting to go back and help in some way. Lady Sansa and King Jon and Winterfell. For his betrayals. To atone his sins.

Perhaps she is punishing herself. Perhaps she is walking a dangerous line. But she has always tended to play with fire.

"Theon? Tell me about Jon Snow."

And so he does, and so she aches, and she is tempted, and she twists ruthlessly away from the horizon of that temptation.

"**Isle of Butterflies, bastions left behind…"**

Daenerys is consciously changing. Carefully, calculatedly. She cannot remain the cold detached queen. She cannot isolate herself. In another lifetime, she held everything inside until it imploded, and that devastated the world. She will not retread that ruinous path. It is more than just trusting the wrong people, giving the wrong people too much sway over her, making the wrong choices. It is more than trust. It is heart. It is dragon versus woman, planting trees and cultivating root growth versus scorching earth and trying to sustain herself alone in a Red Waste. So she seeks change.

She must connect. She must express.

Her time on Naath has done wonders in that regard, given her an abundance of opportunity for trial and error. But this island is a hideaway haven and her peace cannot last eternally. She must return to the world. That is when temptation will return, when old habits will try to resurface, when she will be truly tested.

As she confides this in Theon, he questions, "Why don't you stay? You're the Dragon Queen. You can do as you like. Who could stop you? If this place is where happiness comes easiest, choose to stay." As if it were that simple.

"This is not my home."

She'd said the same of Meereen and meant it. But neither was Westeros. She'd discovered that devastating truth in another lifetime, too late to save herself. But that life is gone and she won't forget again.

No conquering. Only liberating. That was her mistake. When she turned west, she lost sight of which was which.

Perhaps home is not a place. Perhaps it is not this land or that land or a keep or a throne. Perhaps home is people. Missandei and Grey Worm. Ser Jorah. The freedmen of formerly Slaver's Bay. The Dothraki hordes she will reform, their subjugated women she will empower, and the men that suffer in their own ways under such a bloodthirsty existence, trampled under a warrior's aggression. The poor in Volantis. The sacrificed. Perhaps home is all the people she will leave helped in her wake, the ones she was born with such ungodly power for. Perhaps she just never gets home.

Perhaps she wasn't born to be a woman, but merely to serve a purpose.

I don't want that.

I want more.

Can't I have more?

Perhaps her home is Jon Sno—

No.

No.

That is another grave mistake. Never build your home in just one person. Build your home in as many people as you can. A thousand.

Just not that one.

As she prepares to return to Meereen, she spends as much of her days with Missandei and Grey Worm as she can, even though she'd resolved to keep her distance and not impose on the two while they're so new at exploring their love. Now she imposes. Quite shamelessly. She dines with them during meals, she summons them to her shanty after their duties, drinking and talking around firelight.

Grey Worm is puzzled and discomforted at first by the intimacy of her familiarity. To Missandei is nothing new, but to him… They hadn't grown so close, bonded past the bounds of queen and commander, before they lost Missandei, lost themselves, lost their hope. It was those dark days at the end of another lifetime that bridged the distance of decorum. Stripped them raw. When she'd wandered Dragonstone in hollow despair and sent away everyone but him.

In those dark days, he was the only one that could still reach her. He rarely said a word, but he was always there. He would stand by her side as she sat staring for hours into the fire. He would make her eat. He would be the shadow in the moonlight when she woke up screaming in her bed, the only sound in the cavernous keep, cold and black. Sometimes, he would only stand at the end of it, guarding over her from her demons. Sometimes, when she would wake tearing at herself in frenzy, still caught in the grips of nightmares, he would be forced to come into bed with her, to force her wrists down before she hurt herself. He pinned her once, bearing down through her thrashing, but when they discovered that would only worsen her frenzy, he learned to wrap his arms around her and hug her tight, trapping her hands to her sides. The pressure of the hold was the only thing that could calm her.

Towards the end, there was a night he had to drag her out of the stormy sea. She'd fought him, cursed him, tried to cast him out. Banished him from her island. He did not turn away from her. He did not let go.

It was the only time in any lifetime he disobeyed her command.

Her Torgo Nudho was the only one that refused to leave her to her madness, her disgrace, even after she led his Missandei to death.

But this Grey Worm knows nothing of that tormented illusion, thankfully, so her sudden kinship takes him some acclimating to.

Honestly, she might crawl into bed with them like a pile of pups if she thought they wouldn't only tolerate her because she's their Breaker of Chains. As much pride as she's forced herself to cast aside, it hasn't absolutely abandoned her.

By the time she is loading the ironborn back to their ships, readying to set sail, the Unsullied have settled in nicely, their treat with the Naathi holds strong, and only two outlanders have fallen ill with the butterfly fever. It is a horrific illness, but the butterflies and their poison are not so great a threat when the Naathi elders have divulged some of their secrets, enlightened them on how to spot the creatures and ward them off and where their nests tend to grow. With each wing as big as a man's hand, it is fairly easy to avoid those revered messengers of their Lord of Harmony.

There had been a few conflicts cropped up due to some ironborn thievery, but those instances were diffused rather simply, and overall…

This voyage south has been a boon. In a hundred different ways.

And now comes the moment she has dreaded since before they first set out from the Bay of Dragons. For she had already decided then, despite fooling herself otherwise. So she stands on the dock with her friends, her most faithful Unsullied commander and her most beloved sister, and she blocks their path.

Grey Worm had chosen a promising centurion in Marselen to take command of the Unsullied contingent stationed on Naath once he returned to Meereen with their queen. He hadn't known there would be no need of that.

"You will stay. I need my ambassador to Naath on Naath. And my best Unsullied to protect her." Then, "If I have need of you, I will recall you to my side," she lies.

Grey Worm resists. "This one's duty is not fulfilled until this one's queen's enemies are all dead."

"My enemies will never be all dead. Your duty is here now."

"This one belongs by Daenerys Jelmazmo."

"Torgo Nudho," she sighs. "I freed you so you could choose your own paths."

"And we've chosen," Missandei argues. "We've chosen to stay with you."

Dany shakes her head at them, refusing to give in. Not to them nor to her own pathetic selfishness. "I don't need you with me. I don't need you to kill my enemies. What I need is for you to choose yourselves. Choose each other. Choose happiness. Safety."

Missandei pleads, "How can we be safe when you go to the viper's nest?"

"I am still your queen. I've given my command." Then she softens. "This is hardly forever. The trade route is opened. There will be ships sailing between us often. You may return if you choose, once your duties here wane. And I just may have Drogon make the flight for the next harvest festival. In the meantime, just appreciate being home again, Missandei. And you, my Unsullied, take care of her."

"Now and always," Grey Worm vows in Valyrian.

Saying goodbye, leaving behind her most loyal supporters, the only two in the world that never betrayed her, never failed her… Her family… It is harder than she could ever have imagined. But it is the right thing. It is what they deserve.

Her smile hurts, but she hides it well.


End file.
